Pilar Diarte Blasco

Marie Curie Postdoctoral Research Fellow

Qualifications: PhD, MA, BA in History (Zaragoza)

Email: pdb19@le.ac.uk

Tel: 0116 252 3409

Pilar Diarte Blasco is a specialist in Late Antique Archaeology and urban studies, with much experience in survey techniques, geophysics and management and visualization of archaeological data. She has studied widely with extended research visits in the University of Bologna and CINECA (Italy), Barcelona University (Spain) and the Spanish School of History and Archaeology in Rome EEHAR-CSIC (Italy).

Following her BA in History at the University of Zaragoza (2005), Pilar gained a set of scholarships including one from the Ministry of Education and Science to collaborate with the Department of Archaeology at Zaragoza and one for doctoral courses at the University of Bologna (Italy), where she participated in various field projects. In 2007, following a HPC Europe scholarship, she was awarded a 4-year doctoral research scholarship: her thesis (a European PhD gaining the maximum qualification "sobresaliente cum laude") was entitled Morfología del cambio urbano en Hispania. La adaptación de los espacios públicos romanos a la nueva realidad tardoantigua (The Morphology of Urban Change in Hispania: the adaptation of Roman public spaces to the new reality of Late Antiquity). Subsequently Pilar held a postdoctoral fellowship in the Spanish School of History and Archaeology in Rome (EEHAR-CSIC); in that period she joined the major archaeological project Tusculum (a Roman to medieval town south-east of Rome, abandoned in the 12th century AD) where she now directs the implementation of new technologies, the application of non-invasive techniques, as well as shaping future involvement in virtual archaeology (see http://www.eehar.csic.es/tusculum/)

Pilar has now joined the School of Archaeology & Ancient History at the University of Leicester following the award of a prestigious Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellowship in Summer 2015, with the project Urban Centres and Landscapes in Transition. The Mediterranean FarWest in Late Antiquity (MED-FARWEST). Her research, to be overseen by Dr Neil Christie, centres on the transformation processes of town and country in Hispania in Late Antiquity, tracking structural, economic, social and religious impacts and reactions. Her Fellowship will include periods of study and fieldwork in both Spain and Italy and organisation of workshops; an array of publications and talks are also programmed.